While the Mars-500 living unit looked like your grandmother’s basement (ugh, the wood panels!) it was actually a pretty robust simulation. By design, the capsule was set up to simulate all the aspects of the actual mission, which included having landing module and an indoor mockup of the Martian surface—complete with dirt and rocks. Not [...]
Not breaking news by any means, but fascinating nonetheless. A while back I told you about some of the interesting properties of moon dust, one of which was the peculiar smell of it. Every now and then an article about outer space itself having a smell will appear, and in every one it has been [...]
I think the comic today speaks for itself. Our Super Woo adventure has reached its explosive climax, and much will be revealed in the next part. The advantage of running a series nearly two weeks after the event it is inspired from is that when I get really busy, at least I have a plan. [...]
It’s been about a week since lunar perigee, but I’ve still got one or two of these in me. Today we join Oz and Matt exploring a terrestrial phenomenon that rears it’s yolky head at every celestial occurrence. That’s right, balancing eggs. So far I haven’t seen anybody claim that you could balance an egg during the [...]
When I drew last Wednesday’s comic, it was intended as a throwaway. You know, mention the super moon, tie-in to running joke that making incorrect statements about astronomical phenomena cause astronomers to pop out of the woodwork like Candyman or Beetlejuice, throw in a zombie Phil Plait. It was in that last step where I [...]
Brace yourselves. On May 5th we’re due for an astronomical occurrence that enjoyed relative obscurity until last year it was blamed for the devastating 2011 earthquake off the coast of Japan (we’ll get to that later). Can you guess? That’s right, another Super Moon. First, let me say that I hate this term, but I’ll [...]
In late November 2011, NASA’s Curiosity rover was loaded into an Atlas V rocket and sent on its merry way to Mars—an eight- month journey through space. Armed to the teeth with an impressive array of scientific equipment, Curiosity will carry out a very specific mission: examine the Martian surface for signs of life. This [...]
No, it doesn’t. And there is no bus stop metaphor. I tried, dear sweet baby Velociraptor Jesus, I tried. I actually wrote a whole post trying to compare it with the future of space travel in America. But I felt it just took away from a self-admittedly wonderful comic. So I will mince words and [...]
“MOMMY! Neil deGrasse Tyson is up to his old ways again!” Two influences played a part in today’s topic: A) The Great Wall of Lies! If you’ve read the About section of the site you’ll have noticed that I already mentioned this one. As a teenager when I first discovered that the Great Wall of [...]
[UPDATE: Neil's above explanation is apparently erroneous! Erroneous! Legendary star blogger Phil Plait kindly sent me an "Oh, you knuckleheads" and a noogie via email informing me that while the illusion is real, the mechanism behind the apparent size differences of the moon is not due to the foreground elements per se. He wrote a fascinating article [...]